


Hope Springs Eternal

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Decapitation, F/M, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk and Jane make a grisly discovery while searching for Jake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope Springs Eternal

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of based off of the various theories that have been floating around Tumblr lately, specifically the headless Jake/Jakesprite ones. 
> 
> I made Jake's land LOPAN for the time being, because why not. 
> 
> Warning for character death and descriptions of gore and dismemberment.

 

 

You and Jane had arrived in Jake’s land after you’d managed to snag her up from the monochrome wastes of LOCAH. The sky rippled with colors you’d thought to be found only in the gaudiest of highlighter packs or blazing bright advertising billboards. They blossomed above in a continuous hypnosis, like some massive lava lamp spread out across the tropopause of the planet. But there was little time to reflect on the fluorescent light show that graced Jake’s domain. You’d seen a huge volcano, much like the  one Jake had described to you, cresting on the very edge of the horizon, and you had figured it to be a logical point to direct the search for your friend.   
  
The better part of the day was spent on the trek, with both you and Jane dispatching enemies as you came across them and traipsing the remains of what you assumed to once be large and grandiose burial structures. Sometimes you hadn’t been able to help but imagine how excited Jake undoubtedly was to discover that his planet was adorned with such ripe adventuring opportunities. But every thought of Jake brought with it that the familiar worried gnawing at the pit of your stomach, so soon you began to block them out and focus at the task of hand.   
  
Finally, you and Jane had come within close reach of the volcano, thankfully with no damage to either of you other than the slight discomfort of the sticky tar of your enemies’ blood. Both of you had been periodically pestering Jake, albeit with no response, and you were starting to get worried. You could see Jane getting more visibly agitated as well—understandable, as she was the last one to speak to him before his skulltop went on the fritz.   
  
Fuck, you really hope that’s what happened.   
  
_TT: Jake, for the love of all that is good and holy, please fucking answer this._   
  
Suddenly, the two of you heard the soft but recognizable _ping_ of Pesterchum. Jane had gasped, and immediately taken off, trudging through the underbrush towards the sound of the noise as she began to call out for Jake. You were right behind her, and even though she had gotten a head start on you you had managed to grab her arm just as the two of you had burst out into a clearing. You were about to open your mouth, and perhaps lecture her on the dangers of running around here without regard to what may be hiding—which was a decidedly un-Janelike action to take—when you saw the look on her face change drastically to one of shock and then unabashed _horror._   
  
And though your heart froze in fear itself, you still tried to keep a hold on her arm as she rushed forward to the all too recognizable crumpled form lying in the grassy space.   
  
“Jane, _wait_ —”  
  
She ignored you and cried out his name and managed to tear her arm away from your hand, which was more due to your fingers being frozen in shock than her strength but fuck whatever, she was still able to race to his side and collapse on her knees, her fork-like weapon dropping to the ground as she placed both her hands over her mouth. You sprinted over as well, but your pace ground to a stop as you saw the detail of what exact a state Jake was in.   
  
The skulltop had the appearance of a watermelon that’d been whacked with a sledgehammer. One of the sides was completely dented in, causing bright red blood to overflow from beneath the cracks and spill over onto the ground. Jake’s overskirt had ridden up and was crumpled around his shoulders and neck, and what you could see of his hands and face were streaked in dirt and blood. He was facedown, so it’s hard to see if he’s breathing, and that just curled a gordian knot of fear and sickness into your abdomen.   
  
Jane was still sobbing and shaking as she managed to finally pull her hands from her face and reach towards Jake. You found you could only watch and do nothing else as she nudged his shoulder. And as much as you had hoped for a response, maybe a string of colorful curses from an injured but otherwise alive Jake, there was none. Jane let out another heaving and painful breath as she clenches her fingers into the fabric of Jake’s shirt.   
  
You thought there was absolutely no way that this could get any worse, any more _horrifying_ , but then Jane had tried to pick him up.   
  
Fuck. Suddenly the idiom of “knock your block off” made a hell of a lot more sense to you.   
  
Jane screamed. Only one last silent moment followed from the second Jane tried to bring Jake’s body up into her arms, causing the weight of the skulltop to snap the few remaining strands of tendon and skin holding his head to his neck. And then the relative calm that lingered in the shreds of Jake’s island paradise were rent apart as she shrieked.   
  
That galvanized you into action—despite the paralyzing sickness that had overcome you at the sight of your best friend-longtime crush’s fucking _head_ rolling away from his body you had flash-stepped forward and fallen into a crouch beside Jane, who continued to shriek and sob and shake her head, as if to erase the image of their friend’s decapitated corpse from her mind.   
  
You gripped Jane’s hands and pulled them away from Jake—she didn’t need to touch him, no, not while he was like _this_. She tried to pull away and go back to Jake, but then you just tugged her into an embrace, eyes moving to the fiery rainbows blooming in the sky above so you didn’t have to see the remains of your friend again—at least, not until you hadJane calmed down. You couldn’t allow yourself to break, and especially not while you struggled to keep Jane in tact. You refrained from thinking at all, because if you let your thoughts stray to the fact that your best friend and the boy you’d harbored feelings for for three goddamn years— the boy that you’d transcended both space and fucking _time_ to find—was lying brutally killed mere inches from where you were crouched.    
  
After a long, long while that seemed to drain your resolve to not think and plan and look at Jake’s corpse with every passing second, Jane’s sobbing and erratic breaths seem to finally draw to an end. You ceased your secure and vise-like grip around her, and instead started to gently rub her back, until the tremors rocking her body had stopped. Keeping her head facing away from Jake, you lifted her chin and gently rubbed away her tears with the palm of your hand, before helping her to her feet.   
  
You told her to go wait, you told her not to look—because you knew if Jane were to see the body again, she would deteriorate once more into the same cycle. Above all, right now, you had to keep her safe and sane. You and you alone were the fitting sacrifice to witness Jake’s dismembered remains. You watched until she disappeared into the underbrush, before steeling yourself and turning around.   
  
“Just—just, _fuck_. Jake, just _fuck._ ”  
  
You were not incredibly witty nor intelligible as you shakily make your way over to where Jake’s head had rolled to, but fuck it. Your hand was the only thing that steadied you as you crouched down by it, your natural equilibrium entirely tweaked out.   
  
You were grateful that the skullcap seemed to cover the brunt of the wounds, with the exception of course of the bleeding stump of neck and shorn shaft of spine. You can see the dried fountain of blood that had soaked through the shattered impact site on the skulltop but that still didn’t quite associate in your head with _Jake’s blood_. Even though the evidence was right in front of you, whatever defense mechanism that you had built up still refused to let you fully believe that Jake was gone.   
  
Your hand—hell, your entire _body_ —has been trembling all this time, but the moment you turn the skulltop over and see the visible half of Jake’s face wedged inside it all stained with blood and limp and too too pale on that tanned skin a violent tremor shreds through your body and you can’t help it so you drop the head and double over and retch because— _because_ —  
  
Because after three years, after _three years_ of waiting you had thought that you were finally going to see Jake, that you would finally be able to witness his goofy smile and hear his bizarre colloquialisms and _protect_ him from all the mischief that he seemed prone to getting himself into—  
  
And then you had found _this._   
  
Tears dribbled into the white mess frothing from your mouth and for a moment that to your knowledge no self-respecting Strider has ever experienced you are a complete and utter _wreck_ at the way Jake has been torn away from you. It was vile and unfair, you were all supposed to enter the Game together and you were all supposed to fight and _live_ and not be killed before you all even had a fighting chance—  
  
After you had finished emptying what little you had in your stomach and calming the violent shakings coursing through your form, the first fevered thought to come to your mind was _burial_. Yes. Jake needed a resting place, somewhere where he couldn’t be feasted on and desecrated by whatever hellish creatures roamed his planet. It was only right for Jake to have as much peace as you could afford him—he deserved it, after all. He was the boy who had been your friend for years, the boy who had long been the object of your now woefully tardy affections—this was the very least that you could give him. Internment in one of the grand palatial structures gracing his planet’s landscape now that it was too late for anything else.   
  
But then, something else wormed its way into your head—a devilish thought, one that you should reject without a second though because it’s wrong, it’s worse sacrilege to both Jake’s body and his memory but—  
  
 _But._   
  
But it could work. You could do it. You could fix everything. Jane would be all right, Jake would be alive, and you wouldn’t have to bury your best friend-cum-secret brocrush.    
  
You could do it—no. You would do it. You _will_ do it. You grit your teeth and you breath, the first breath that you are conscious of since finding Jake.   
  
You slowly lifted the body up over your shoulder, trying not to dwell on how heavy and limp it was and rather how lively and warm it will be once your plan was successful.   
  
You curled your arm around Jake’s head and gently lifted it up, keeping it securely within the crook of your elbow so that you don’t drop it. His face pressed against the warmth of your heart, and you took a moment to just awkwardly hug it there, not caring of the mess he smothered onto your shirt.   
  
With the burden of Jake’s life hanging in the balance between your shoulders and your heart, you trudged out of the clearing to find Jane, with a single thought dominant over all others in your mind.   
  
_Hope always lives on. Always._


End file.
